Boost for WWF’s campaign on Hong Kong ivory trade

Posted on

08 February 2016

A series of countries central to the illegal ivory trade have now made a commitment to cease or regulate their domestic ivory markets. The latest announcement by Hong Kong, that it is to explore phasing out the trade, follows similar decisions by China and the USA and Thailand’s moves to regulate its domestic trade. Hong Kong’s decision represents a signiﬁcant success for WWF’s campaign to ban the city’s ivory trade. Launched in 2015, the campaign has gained the support of other organizations, members of the Legislative Council and more than 70,000 people. This decision is also an indication of how fast national policy is changing and how international momentum to tackle illegal wildlife trade is building. Last year saw the unanimous adoption of the historic UN General Assembly Resolution on wildlife crime and closed with China agreeing with African nations to jointly scale up their response to wildlife crime during the 6th Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). Next up is the European Union’s new action plan to combat wildlife traﬃcking, which is to be launched on World Wildlife Day on 3 March 2016.